New Acquisition 
Image: Pasadena Train Station by Joseph Stoddard (2012.010.01)
PMH is proud to announce that Joseph Stoddard's watercolor, Pasadena Train Station, will be donated to its permanent art collection. Currently on exhibit in the Contemporary Masters, Artistic Eden III show, the watercolor will be added to the Museum's important collection of California plein air paintings. The painting depicts Pasadena's historic 1935 Santa Fe Railroad Station, which was in use through 1994. Built in the Mission Revival style, the station has now been rehabilitated as La Grande Orange Caf�.
Joseph Stoddard has been painting impressionistic views of the city since 1987. His work has been featured in many Southern California periodicals and books, including the 2001 publication A Pasadena Sketchbook (Historical Society of Southern California).
The watercolor is the third artwork generously donated to PMH as a Museum Purchase Prize winner. The gallery-members of the Pasadena Art Gallery Association, which curate the biennial Contemporary Masters, Artistic Eden exhibitions in collaboration with PMH, select and purchase one entry which best represents each exhibition's theme.
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About the Collections
PMH maintains the area's largest and most comprehensive collection of documents and artifacts relating to the history of Pasadena and neighboring communities.
The ever-expanding collection spans the years 1834 to the present and contains well over one million historic photographs, rare books, manuscripts, maps, architectural records, art, costumes and textiles, and objects.
The Mission of the Museum is to promote an appreciation of history, culture, arts, and sciences relevant to Pasadena and adjoining communities.
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The Collections Quarterly, sent out four times a year, features new acquisitions as well as select items from the Archives, art and artifacts collection, and the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo collections.
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Archives Feature
Sierra College Photo Album
The PMH Archives houses a beautiful album - containing panoramic views of Pasadena, its surrounding mountains, and beaches - which touts Pasadena as a perfect location for a women's college in Southern California. The book was designed to entice wealthy patrons to donate funds for the college. The proposed name was Sierra College of Southern California. Its mission was to educate women in zoology, botany, geology, and astronomy. We do not know if it ever got off the ground. J. W. Wood's 1917 history of Pasadena mentions this group's attempt to raise funds for a women's college. However, approximately ten years after this album was made, the group had yet to raise enough money for the college. Along with the pictures, the text in the album is also quite interesting. If you would like to take a look at this "sales brochure," please visit the Research Library & Archives Thursday through Sunday from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Image: Driveway of the Proposed Campus, 1908-09 (Sierra College Photo Album. Box XXVIII, Volume 97, Page 16)
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Collections Feature
A Fashionable Wedding 
This gown was worn in 1936 by Barbara Fern Tauxe when she married Thomas Ira Smith, Jr. of Glendale. The wedding was covered in the Social News section of the Glendale News-Press, which spent seven paragraphs of the thirteen paragraph story describing the wardrobe of the wedding party.
This dress was described as "a princess gown of ivory satin with a Chantilly lace collar and peplum. The long train also had a deep lace trimming. The sleeves ended in pointed cuffs. A fingertip veil of tulle was held in place by a coronet of seed pearls and orange blossoms."
The strength of the Costume & Textile Collection is women's formal wear, which includes approximately fifty wedding gowns. A selection of these gowns will be on display next year in the exhibition, I Do! I Do! Pasadena Ties the Knot 1860 to Present Day. To read more about the gowns and upcoming exhibition, see the current issue of Pasadena's ROSE Magazine. Image: Wedding gown, 1936. Ordered from B.G. Garment Co., Chicago Illinois. Gift of Nancy J. Smith (2012.002.02) |
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Fenyes Feature
Civil War Era Correspondence
April 12 marked 151 years since the start of the American Civil War in 1861. Research in the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo Papers has brought to light a group of letters encompassing the war years. In 1858, after a lapse of twenty years, Miss Rebekah Chase of East Machias, Maine, revived a long neglected correspondence with her cousin Leonard Franklin Scott, father of Eva Scott Fenyes. By 1861, their discussions of health and family became interspersed with political observations. Worry as the country slipped toward open rebellion, news of family members caught up in the Battle of Bull Run, commentary on freedom, slavery, abolition and emancipation, and finally reconstruction give us a glimpse into the concerns of two ordinary citizens coping during momentous times.
Below is an except of a letter from Leonard to Rebekah dated April 9, 1861:
"I am a Republican, but I shrink from a Civil War - if it can possibly be avoided - I would sooner see a peaceable separation than War - But if a separation takes place - I hope all the Slave States except the few that may be willing to become Free States - will go off together. Otherwise those remaining would be constantly threatening to secede unless their arrogant & unreasonable demands were acceeded [sic] to by the North - No - let us settle the matter of Slavery forever and wash our hands clean of the accursed institution but let it be done, if possible, without the shedding of human blood."
Image: Assorted letters between Leonard Franklin Scott and Rebekah Chase (Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo Papers, Box 4)
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